The invention relates to a carbon nanotubule enclosing a foreign material applicable as a new material in electrical and chemical fields and the like.
A carbon nanotubule is known as a microscopic fibrillar tube having a nanometer size in diameter. The carbon nanotubule comprises a single or coaxial monoatomic sheets cylindrically bent around a center axis of the tubule and a cylindrical center space or a cylindrical hollow defined by the sheet. The monoatomic sheet comprises a graphite carbon monoatomic sheet. Such carbon tubule is such an extremely slender carbon fibril as having a nanometer size in diameter. The individual monoatomic sheets are coaxially arranged to be separated by a distance in the radial direction. The micron-sized carbon fibril has been well known in the prior art. The nanometer sized carbon fibril has first been reported in 1991 Nature, Vol. 354, pp. 56-58, and thus received a great attention through the world as having applicabilities to one-dimensional conductor, catalyst or super reinforced structures and various fields. Each of the coaxial carbon tubules was tested to clear electronic properties thereof, which are reported in 1992 Physical Review Letter, Vol. 68, pp. 1579-1581. Electronic properties of the carbon nanotubule depend upon the diameter and a pitch of a helical structure thereof and thus differ from various materials such as metals and semiconductors. The difference in the electrical properties of the carbon nanotubule also appears between semiconductors having various energy band gaps. This makes the carbon nanotubule very attractive.
As described above, carbon nanotubules have received a great attention as a new material applicable to various industries. It has occasionally been considered to use the carbon nanotubule as an absorbent or a complex. It, however, seems that it has been neither considered nor known to use the carbon nanotubule as an enclosure for foreign materials as a novel material or utilize a carbon nanotubule involving a foreign material. Of course, it seems that it has never been known in the art how to introduce any foreign material into such nanometer sized tubules to form the carbon nanotubule involving any foreign material.